


it's hard to get to heaven (with my head in my hands)

by edelwoodsouls



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caleb's Pokemon Evolution, Gen, M/M, Tier 5, canon-typical trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28599903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edelwoodsouls/pseuds/edelwoodsouls
Summary: "Come on, Mark," Damien insists."Not yet- there's someone we can't leave without."[or: Caleb is fifteen years old when he finds himself in Tier 5]
Relationships: Adam Hayes/Caleb Michaels, Damien & Caleb Michaels, Mark Bryant & Caleb Michaels, Mark Bryant & Damien
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	it's hard to get to heaven (with my head in my hands)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exhaustedwerewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exhaustedwerewolf/gifts).



> title from 'we were the same' by matt maeson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been talking about this fic for ~months~ so I thought it was high time to put it out into the world!!  
> Hope you enjoy ^_^

**_Damien_ **

"We can't leave yet."

Dr B's brother can barely stand, barely keep his eyes open - his face is thin and drawn with sweat, sunken and waxy in all the worst places, like a skeleton with skin stretched across its bones - and _still_ he shoves Damien with considerable force as he begins to head for the exit.

"What?" Damien can't help the irritation itching in his voice. He can hear Dr B buzzing in his ear with increasing panic - it's starting to grate on his nerves, and he wants to be far away from here before she decides to grow a brain and call the AM on him.

He's not sure how many people he could manipulate at once, and certainly doesn't want to try to find out fighting his way out of this place.

"Come on, Mark," he continues, trying to lift the guy up - he's like a sack of rocks, suddenly rooted to the spot. "We don't have time for this - we have to _go_."

"No," Mark grits his teeth. He's clearly in pain, a breath away from falling, struggling against Damien’s desires though he doesn’t yet know it. "There's someone we can't leave without."

"As flattering as it is that you think so highly of my abilities already, even I can't face off this entire building. I can't organise a whole fucking prison break."

"I know." His eyes are wide and Damien can feel himself melting already. "But just one. Please."

Damn the Bright siblings.

"Fine. Show me."

Now that he's promised, Mark becomes a lot easier to move - but not much. He's barely holding his own weight as it is.

Whoever this other person is better not be in a coma, too, or Damien might just call it a day and leave them both to rot.

Okay, that's a lie. But what the hell can possibly be so special about one of the other prisoners here to warrant priority? Mark is leading him down a corridor _lined_ with cell after cell, and Damien can sense countless minds - tangles of messed up wants and fears and needs - on the other side of the doors.

It makes him feel sick. It makes him feel as if that despair - _their_ despair - is collecting like rainwater in the pit of his stomach, filling him steadily up. He wants to escape - _they_ want to escape, and the want ricochets back and forth until it's a hammering against his skull.

He's about to give up when Mark stops. "Here," he says, nodding at a door that is no different to any of the others.

Damien leans Mark against the wall, grabs the keys he stole from the previous guard. As he reaches out for the door, he finds that awful need to flee vanish, replaced with a calm certainty. _This is the right thing to do_ , he thinks, but the thought sits awkwardly inside him, rubbing rough edges against the rest of him.

He pushes the discomfort away. _Just because you had an unselfish thought for once doesn't mean you need to have a_ _breakdown_ , he tells himself, and the voice in his head sounds an awful lot like Dr Bright.

He isn't sure what he's expecting when he opens the cell door. A cute girl, perhaps. A guy Mark has made friends with - Dr B always said Mark imprinted on people like a lost puppy.

But of everything, he definitely isn't expecting the _child_ hunched on the concrete floor. The strip lighting in the cell flickers on, illuminating the figure. He's dressed in the same drab uniform as everyone else, but it's loose, hanging awkwardly off his frame. His skin is a similar sickly pallor as Mark, shadows dragging at his eyes. The only individual flare is a spray of golden curls springing unruly from his head, falling over his face in an oddly shy, high school kind of way.

He's already staring at the door when Damien pushes it open, eyes narrowed and unsurprised.

_Hm._

"Uh," Damien reaches unsuccessfully for words, "hey, kid."

Said kid ignores him entirely, eyes shifting to stare at - no, _through_ \- the wall beside him, where Mark is slumped. Can he see through walls? Detect heartbeats?

"This is a jailbreak," Damien continues, doing unenthusiastic jazz hands. "Let's go?"

"What did you do to Mark?" the boy asks - and he _is_ a boy, seventeen at the most. Damien feels an uncomfortably sick feeling at the pit of his stomach.

"I'm breaking him out. Hang on, how did you-"

But the kid is already pushing up from the floor, rocketing past Damien without a word.

Damien stares into the room. It's small, just as sparse as Mark's room even though the kid definitely hasn't been in a coma for two years. There's a desk with nothing on it except an ipod without headphones - the wires a suicide risk, he guesses.

The bed is perfectly made - aren't teenagers supposed to be messy? Though he supposes the lack of _anything else_ to do might make one tidy out of boredom.

He ducks into the room to grab the ipod - just in case.

When he emerges, the kid is checking Mark over with surprisingly gentle fingers, a look of utter concentration on his face.

There's something dark and brewing behind it that sets Damien on edge.

"Mark?" the kid's voice is surprisingly soft. Damien can't get a read on this kid, a bundle of contradictions swinging back and forth between two extremes. When he reaches out to feel the kid's mind, he finds a swirling hurricane of colour. Taking a single step feels like the winds will tear away his skin, his very being.

"Hey, Caleb," Mark murmurs, a laugh bordering on hysteria. "Long time, huh?"

"Yeah, come on. Let's get you out of here."

And just like that the kid - Caleb? - heaves Mark off the floor like he weighs less than a bag of feathers, holding him up effortlessly.

Damien tries not to feel self-conscious about how hard he was struggling only moments ago.

"Are we going?" Caleb stares fiercely at Damien, making eye contact for the first time, and suddenly the hallway feels too small. He can feel the fear of being trapped down here climbing his throat and strangling him. It makes the world slant in a blur of dizzying colour, the sudden onslaught rushing through his veins.

"Yeah," he chokes, all but stumbling in the direction of the exit. He wants to get _out_. "This way.”

* * *

_**Caleb** _

He emerges into sunlight for the first time in two years.

Isn’t it strange how you can forget things so vitally important? Things that kept you alive for sixteen years, kept you together and breathing?

Well, it isn’t so strange; he can’t remember the curve of his mother’s smile, the colour of his sister’s hair, the image of ink staining his father’s fingers. They are cartoon sketches in his head, placeholders where he knows real images should be.

Like the sun. The pain of it bright against his eyes feels like breathing for the first time in years. Stepping out of a grave back into his own skin.

Adam would say something about Persephone, or Orpheus. Caleb just grits his teeth and shoves the memory down.

He’d forgotten what it was to have that natural warmth against his skin, warmth not stolen from radiators or lukewarm cups of tea (they wouldn’t let him have hot drinks, just in case). He’d forgotten the soft yellow that wasn’t harsh halogen strip lights or flashing red alarms.

He’d forgotten the world had light and warmth at all.

Mark weighs almost nothing, as they hurry away from the building with surprisingly little fuss, even with all the muscle mass Caleb’s lost from loitering in a cell for two years. He feels the amber sparks of concern churning in his gut - and it’s almost nice.

He’d forgotten what his own emotions felt like, too, sitting inside of his chest. The last year has been a haze of grey populated with other people’s noise.

After a few seconds the emotions start to scratch against his skin. They don’t fit anymore, so unfamiliar with their home - so used to living in other people’s chests.

He reaches out blindly for someone else to latch onto. Mark - bright, familiar Mark, whose relief and bewilderment spill into Caleb instantly, like a dam being let loose.

Just for a moment, he’s adrift in a sea of green.

All too soon, that bliss is snatched away with the arrival of this new guy. He’s unfamiliar and _conspicuously_ shady, wearing a black hoodie, his long dark hair pulled up in a loose bun. Yellow sparks across his skin like electricity, an acidic emotion somewhere between concern and suspicion.

Caleb doesn’t like how strong this guy’s emotions are, how they jump across the space between them without Caleb even reaching out, digging into his skin. How they tower over him like a skyscraper, a wave threatening to crash into him, wash away any sense of self he has fought tooth and nail to cling to these past few years.

Definitely a Class E. Some kind of manipulator.

Maybe someone like him.

“I’m Damien,” the guy says, brushing past him to open up the doors. “Let’s get going.” 

And all of a sudden Caleb feels the urge, the _need_ , to _get going_ sink into his bones before he has time to think. He pulls Mark into the car, setting him down carefully into a seat as the other guy climbs into the front.

As soon as the wheels begin to turn, the tug in his gut vanishes, leaving behind only the ghost of a raw, exposed nerve. Like someone has cracked open his chest and scooped his organs out.

“Don’t do that again,” he hisses, surprised and pleased at how the threat sounds in his voice. He isn’t the child he was when he first came here; he’s learned from the best how to be dangerous.

He can’t help the sharp flash of power in his chest as he feels the flicker of shock roll off the other guy - _Damien_ , what kind of name is that? - as their eyes meet in the rearview mirror.

“Most people take minutes - _hours_ \- to wear off the first time.”

Caleb says nothing, just glaring.

“No, seriously.” The car comes to a stop and Damien twists in his seat, reaches out and grabs Caleb’s wrist tight. The skin on skin contact _burns_ like someone is scraping away the top layer to expose the flesh beneath. When was the last time someone - not a doctor taking his vitals but a _real_ , human person - touched him? “What are you?”

“Angry,” Caleb snaps back. “So don’t fucking do that to me again.”

“Or what? What can you do?”

He isn’t going to rise to this guy’s goading, no matter how tempting it is. Not yet. As much as he wants to wipe the curious, hungry pool of red lapping at his heels away. As much as he wants to reach out and twist it into the bottomless silver of fear, the only colour he truly recognises as familiar anymore.

But he doesn’t have enough of the facts. Doesn’t know who this guy is, or why he broke Mark - and him - out. Doesn’t know what this world looks like, what _he_ looks like, compared to before. He needs to bide his time.

Adam would be so proud of his restraint.

“Look,” he says through gritted teeth. “I appreciate the break out. But I don’t owe you shit.”

Damien’s hunger tints with anger - this is a guy who isn’t used to being told no.

Caleb feels that anger, that desire curl through the car, twist itself around his tongue. “I’m an empath,” he says, the words spilling out like they can’t wait to be free.

Damien’s emotions dull instantly with disinterest and disappointment. “Oh. Like you can feel other people’s emotions and shit?”

“And shit,” Caleb agrees, using what little is left of his own will to skirt around the truth.

“Disappointing.”

“I know.”

Damien’s desires evaporate slowly from the air, and Caleb breathes a deep sigh of relief, a weight lifting from his chest.

“What’s so important about you?”

Caleb blinks. “What?”

Damien’s eyes search his face, not pushing at him like before, just genuine curiosity. “I only came for Mark. But he wouldn’t let me leave without you.”

Something goes soft and warm inside Caleb - a deeply buried part of himself he tries to ignore. “We got stuck together a lot in there, before…”

The warm glow turns sour. Once Mark had vanished without trace and Wadsworth had lost her favourite toy, she’d needed a new plaything.

And after all, as she always told him, he was so _special_. _Powerful_. She’d taken a particular interest in his budding ability to affect others.

“Mark’s kinda like the older brother I never had,” Caleb shrugs, shoving away the dangerous rabbit hole his thoughts are spiralling into. Damien isn’t pushing his will onto him, but he still feels the truth rolling off his tongue unbidden.

“Hm.”

“What’s he to _you_ , then?” Caleb reaches out, trying to tease apart the tangle of emotions Damien is giving off. “Why risk getting on the AM’s radar for one guy?”

He laughs bitterly. “I’m already on their radar, thanks to his fucking _sister_ of all people-”

“His sister?”

“Yeah. Dr Bright.”

Caleb’s brain grinds to a halt. “ _Dr Bright_?”

“You know her?”

“Dr Bright is Mark’s _sister_?”

“Uh, yeah. How do you not know that?” Confusion spills into the car, ricocheting back and forth between them.

“Mark’s last name is _Bryant_ \- fuck, of _course_ it’s a fucking code name.”

He turns to look at Mark’s sleeping form with new eyes. It’s there, underneath the layers of trauma Tier 5 piled on top of him - in the curve of his jaw, the crook of his nose.

His former therapist is still ruining his life years after he last saw her.

“Can you just drive?” he asks suddenly. The need to flee sits between them like a bomb about to go off, a timer counting down, panic climbing his throat. He can’t think straight with those lifeless grey buildings still looming on the horizon.

“We’ll come back to this,” Damien says with a pointed look. “But sure, kid. I hate this place as much as you.”

“I very much doubt that,” Caleb laughs darkly.

He’ll be back soon, he promises himself, as that hell begins to vanish behind the trees lining the curving road.

He’ll burn the whole fucking place to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline for this fic is basically TIN-esque stuff happened when Caleb & Adam were 14/15, and Mark was only in the coma for 1yr.  
> Leaning to Caleb and Mark centric despite the 1st PoV

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [@edelwoodsouls](https://edelwoodsouls.tumblr.com)


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